


Tizita (color esperanza)

by HipericoLotus



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, World War II, matecito
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 08:56:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14233782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HipericoLotus/pseuds/HipericoLotus
Summary: There's a little group of huddled soldiers passing around a gourd. After awhile they notice him staring.“Not drugs,” one of them says, apparently accustomed to explaining what they’re (not) doing.





	Tizita (color esperanza)

Somewhere in Europe, sometime around 1945

 

The scent hits him first. Back when sight and hearing were unreliable, sensation clouded by chronic pain, his sense of smell was what connected him most solidly to the world. What he smells now disappeared from his life almost twenty years ago, leaving a few precious echos: the belly of the empty gourd his mother kept on the windowsill, the little summer mounds of cut grass in Central Park. 

Memories come, visceral as flashbacks and perhaps equally jarring. Yerba sliding into a gourd, the stream of water cutting through the leaves and rising up like seafoam seeping into a footprint in the sand. It’s a strange pastiche of images and impressions - relief for asthma, raucous laughter, easy silence. Fragrant mountain herbs added to relieve the bitterness, the comfort of his grandmother’s lap, mate warming him from inside while she warmed him from without. Brewed strong and hot and bitter during the day; gently steeped as weak tea at breakfast; rich, milky and soothing with a light meal in the afternoon; cool and scented with orange slices in the summer heat. 

God, he misses his mother. 

The cadence of the voices registers next. They don’t sound like his family, but they do sound familiar, like the doctor and his wife, accents sharp, pace quick, more lunfardo than criollo. He’s looking around, now, quickly finding the little group of soldiers huddled in a circle. After awhile they notice him staring. 

“Not drugs,” one of them says, apparently accustomed to explaining what they’re (not) doing. 

It’s so hard to answer. Castellano is inexorably intimate to him. For almost twenty years, he’s only spoken it in the presence of a loved one. But the words surface, if clumsily. For the first time, soldiers react to his voice with unbridled joy. They’re startled, laughing, slapping his back, offering him a seat, peppering him with questions. The realization that the Star-Spangled Monkey drawls in cordobés achieves what all of his stunts on stage never could. 

The cebador passes Steve the gourd. 

The next day, his piss smells sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> Tizita: (var. Tezeta; Amharic: ትዝታ," which means memory,[1] "nostalgia" or "longing"[2]) is a type of song in Ethiopia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizita)
> 
> Color Esperanza (Hope-colored) is a sorta cheesy ballady rock thing by Diego Torres that was popular when I was a kid. Not exactly what was playing on the radio in the forties, but it's the kind of catchy, upbeat thing that would be in the background while baby millenials sat around with friends drinking mate (or, if they were hardcore, fernet.) It has the vibe I was going for. 
> 
> Before mate became a thing outside of the Southern Cone, my family used to get some serious side-eye when we brewed mate in public. It looks like weed. Airport security wasn't a big fan either when it would turn up in our luggage.


End file.
